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Cyanogen raises $80 million to be the definitive third place OS

Cyanogen, the company behind CyanogenMod, have raised $80 million from a myriad of different backers in an attempt to become the third horseman in the smartphone operating system battle, behind Apple and Google.

The new round of investment includes partners such as Twitter, Qualcomm, Telefónica and Rupert Murdoch, according to Re/Code. Microsoft was poised to invest but does not appear to have made it into this round of funding, which brings the total amount raised by Cyanogen to $110 million.

The competition for the third place position in smartphone operating system usage behind Apple and Google's Android includes Microsoft's Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Cyanogen, which is a forked version of Android. In 2014, Windows Phone's market share fell to just 2.5% and Microsoft is revamping its mobile efforts with Windows 10. BlackBerry currently has less than one percent of the smartphone market, choosing to focus on business and other enterprise users who require security.

CyanogenMod has over 10 million users as of 2014 and this new round of investment is likely to push that number even higher as they bring on more staff and invest more resources in what could be the third horseman.

"We’re committed to creating an open computing platform that fundamentally empowers the entire mobile ecosystem from developers to hardware makers, and most importantly, consumers around the world," Cyanogen CEO Kirt McMaster told Re/Code.

Source: Re/Code | Image via AndroidWorld

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